Loopholes found in DC Avanti vehicles' registrations: Police

Car designer Dilip Chhabria at Esplanade Court in Azad Maidan on Tuesday. File pic

Just a day after car designer and enthusiast Dilip Chhabria was arrested in connection with a sports car registration and finance forgery case, a team of the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) carried out raids at the official premises of DC Designs.

The officers have found that the company manufactured about 463 DC Avanti sports cars since 2016, and they suspect that 50 per cent of those vehicles were illegally registered by Chhabria to get loans from NBFCs and two private banks. The crime branch confirmed that they would do a forensic audit to analyse the company's financial records.

The crime branch had initially said that they have details of 127 DC Avanti sports cars, which were sold to different customers. Out of these, 90 cars were suspected to be used in fraudulent activities, including dual registrations to get loans from NBFCs and then sell them off to third parties.

"Every angle of the case will be investigated thoroughly," said Milind Bharambe, joint commissioner of police (Crime) The investigating team has also found out that dozens of NBFC and two private banks had given loans to DC Designs and serious negligence by RTO officials has also surfaced. "We have found serious loopholes in the entire process of issuing loans and the way registrations were done by RTO for DC Avanti cars," said a CIU officer.

The CIU team led by API Sachin Vaze would also visit the manufacturing units of DC Designs in Pune, Gurugram and Haryana to collect all necessary information required for the ongoing probe. They would also look into the vehicle modifications done by the company.

"As per the SC guidelines, there are strict rules related to modifications of vehicles. We will try to find out whether rules were flouted while modifying cars and bikes," the officer added.